


sun dogs in december

by decemberdaydream (miraclesinapril)



Category: The Boyz (Korea Band)
Genre: CW: kim sunwoo, Fluff, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29137098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miraclesinapril/pseuds/decemberdaydream
Summary: 3 times Chanhee tries to ask Juyeon to Winter Ball and one time he doesn’t.
Relationships: Choi Chanhee | New/Lee Juyeon
Comments: 5
Kudos: 55





	sun dogs in december

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by christmassy mv 
> 
> also, 
> 
> they’re in college bc.

“We should get up,” Chanhee offers into the silence. The cream ceiling stares back with stoniness, the mattress takes in the outline of his body and holds him closer. In his chest there’s half a breath lodged deep and sucking itself in likewise.

“We should,” Juyeon echoes slowly, determinedly undetermined.

“Let’s go,” Chanhee picks up his head.

“Five minutes,” Juyeon exerts a little of his weight, sending Chanhee flat.

“No, now,” problem sets and secondary reading awaits them in the library, as well as what’s probably their grouchy study group. Chanhee doesn’t really need to go but Juyeon always does better with Chanhee’s explanations so he’s resigned himself to this duty.

“Just five,”

“Okay,”

“Sunwoo’s gonna give out to us again,”

Juyeon hums in dismissal, “He has no room to speak on anyone’s tardiness. Besides, he’s busy today,”

“Doing?”

“Ball tickets, manning the stand with Jaehyun hyung,”

“Oh,” Chanhee exhales, not expecting the subject that’s been circulating his mind to spring up like this, “have you been?”

“Hm?”

“To the ball,”

“Yes,” Juyeon slurs, far away, like he’s already half asleep, “first year,”

“I’ve never,”

“Really?” His surprise throttles him awake and Chanhee feels his cheeks right to his collarbones go warm.

“Uh-huh. What’s it like?” His fingers trace groves in Juyeon’s hair, faint, wandering, restrained.

“Boring,” Juyeon exhales into Chanhee’s stomach. The warmth dissolves into him with a lacing of something bubbly, something fermented in the coolest moonlight, “Until the alcohol hits. Everyone starts caring less about everything then,”

Chanhee’s laugh is crystal, taunting, “I hear some golden stories here,”

“No,” Juyeon says quickly, “none,”

Chanhee’s fingers tighten marginally in the messy crown of hair, “Don’t lie to me,”

“I wouldn’t,” Juyeon murmurs, sweet, honest, like a peach split in two.

“Pictures?”

“I’ll show you later,”

“Why not now?”

“Too comfy,” his hand slides up Chanhee’s stomach in proof, right up next to his face, except he’s under the shirt and his palm spans the width of Chanhee’s waist and his nails rest on the skin with enough pressure to be felt but not mark, placeholder divots, white ink promise of a blueprint. Bubbles, down to the marrow, in a way that brings Chanhee close to dissolving himself.

“I won’t forget,” he whispers, spume-akin dizziness stuck in his throat.

“I know,” he hums on Chanhee’s navel and Chanhee could slither out of his skin, all shiny bone and sodden sinews and the frequency of insanity oscillating in between.

“Did you have a date?”

“Of course,”

“Who?”

“Minji noona,”

If there was a fan in the room, if there was a grandfather clock, if there was music, they would all come to a screeching stop. _“Minji_ noona?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Nothing,”

Juyeon raps lightly on his stomach _, hello?_ “Tell me,”

“Nothing,” Chanhee exhales slowly, certain the pulse points all over his body are entirely too audible, “just, doesn’t seem like your type.”

He shoves himself up by the elbows, each rooted on a different side of Chanhee’s midriff and Chanhee feels like deer enclosed in a clover trap as Juyeon appraises him from his perch of Chanhee's mid-torso, “What’s my type?”

“You tell me,” he swallows and swallows and finds the empty ceiling that somehow seems to buzz now, undercurrent of a titter.

“I don’t have one,”

“Sure.”

“Yes, sure.” Juyeon sighs, rests his head back down on the comfort of his Chanhee-pillow, “But it wasn’t… it wasn’t like that. With Minji noona.”

“Yeah?”

“We’re friends.”

_So are we. What does that mean?_

Instead, he threads light into his throat and says, “And this year?”

“I don’t know,”

“Anyone in mind?”

“A few?”

 _“A few?”_ Chanhee scoffs, attempts to shove Juyeon off him but the man is concrete and rooted.

Juyeon lifts his head again. Everything in him is tame this time, a bright-eyed cub with blunt teeth carrying the plea of affection in his mouth like a bone, “I’m popular you know,”

Chanhee’s lips ache, the waves echo to his gums, to his tongue. He bites, “Yah, where do you think you are,”

“Just reminding you,”

“You better stop talking if you want to live,”

“Fine,” he settles down on his forearms crossed on Chanhee’s abdomen “fine,” eyes lazy, smile soft, “you?”

Chanhee considers. Weighs his intention on the scale of the silence. “What about me?”

“Who are you going with?”

He shrugs. “No one yet,”

“You’ll find someone,”

It’s kind. Reassuring. He wants to hurl it against the wall like dinner plates.

“Of course I will.”

“Yah, are you bragging?”

“Of course I am,”

“Then how come—“

“Ahbupbupbup,” he pushes Juyeon’s head down and meets no resistance. He lifts his own to show off the curve of his grin, “Exactly.”

Something like ‘rude’ is muttered into the fabric of his shirt and gets pointedly ignored. 

“We should really get going,”

“Five more,”

“You’re terrible,” Chanhee sighs.

“Shh,”

“Terrible, terrible.Need to stop hanging out wi—“

A large hand engulfs his jaw, veiling his mouth so his words get lost into heat and palm-lines.

“Just stay here,” Juyeon sighs, snuggling into Chanhee’s stomach, lips brushing the naked skin where the shirt rode high.

In the following silence Chanhee dissolves like femur in acid, scream rebounding off his gut in peristalsis.

* * *

“So why aren’t you making Friday again?” Chanhee says as Changmin loops an arm around him.

“Busy,”

“I got that bit,”

“We’re going shopping,” Sunwoo offers from behind them where he and Juyeon have crept up.

“For soap and deodorant? Hallelujah,” Chanhee ululates to the sky.

The kick to the shin is to be expected.

“We’re getting our stuff,” Changmin says, his voice taking an uneven dip, “for you know,” he trails off, incomplete.

“Winter Ball,” Sunwoo rings out loud and clear behind them.

“Oh shit?” Juyeon bounds up to Chanhee’s side, glancing over at Changmin with unconcealed surprise and excitement. 

“Yeah,” Sunwoo comes up on the other side, linking his arm with Changmin’s. Chanhee can feel the stiffness that goes through his friend, then the quick-silver melting. He wants to throw up. Kinda.

“Sunwoo and Changmin sitting in a tree!” Juyeon exclaims. Chanhee rolls his eyes. 

“Yah, how the hell old are you?” Sunwoo says, thoroughly unimpressed. He reaches over to pinch Juyeon as Juyeon opens his mouth to tease further but Chanhee intercepts, pushing them apart.

“Stop that and tell us how it happened,”

Changmin clears his throat. “It all started when my eomoni and abeoji met, and Sunwoo’s eomoni and abeoji met,”

“I will waterboard you,” Chanhee says darkly, not at all joking.

“Ouch,” Changmin breaks their bond and puts some distance between them, “no wonder you’re single,”

“Hey,” Juyeon whines on both of their behalfs, “tell us the story,”

“There isn’t much to tell,” Changmin shrugs, aware of the exact degree of annoyance he’s revving up in his friends.

“He came to the stand as we were closing up yesterday,” Sunwoo offers quickly when he sees Chanhee contemplating _something_ (smart), “and I had a final pair of tickets left from my batch, so I asked if he wanted to go together and he said yes.”

Unamused, Chanhee's eyes narrow, “Why did you tell the story so soullessly?”

“What did you want?” Sunwoo sighs, “Fairy lights? One-kneed proposals?"

“I bet he’d love that,” Changmin chimes in happily, "a whole production."

“A princess in disguise,” Sunwoo agrees.

Chanhee’s mouth opens and closes around a threat, wondering how much he can deny without giving away that they’ve stumbled on some kernel of truth. But then he doesn’t have to say a word, it turns out. Turns out someone’s met him where he stands.

“Maybe you guys are not familiar but there’s this word, ehm, _standards,”_ Juyeon shrugs, voice devoid of ridicule or humour.

There should be effervescence, like there is where Juyeon is concerned. And there is, there is, the kernel grows a shoot in Chanhee’s gut, and grows and grows and develops a root too, something anchoring like stone.

“Anyway,” Sunwoo says, “aren’t you two the only ones without dates yet?”

“And?” Juyeon says, bored.

“There’s lots of time left,” Chanhee adds.

“Where do you suppose you’ll get tickets once they’re gone?” Sunwoo raises a solemn brow at them.

Chanhee puffs his chest, speaks from the tip of his nose, “I haven’t cultivated a friendship with you this long for you to stab me in the back like that.”

 _“That’s_ what you befriended me for?”

“What else could there possibly be?”

“You ruthless curmudgeon, my date and I are leaving. Come on Changmin,”

“Get back here!” Chanhee runs a little after them but they’ve already gone ahead and it’s too much effort.

“Yah,” Sunwoo yells over his shoulder as they get farther and farther, “don’t take too long! I really will sell every last ticket!”

Chanhee sighs. He doesn’t need to slow down for Juyeon to fall into stride with him again, lucky bastard blessed with even longer legs.

“So,” Chanhee says, a thumb searching for the start of the spool.

“So,” Juyeon echoes, close, elbows bumping in a knot of gravity.

“Any luck? With- with dates?”

“I- I mean _sure,_ but… it doesn’t feel right?”

 _What about this,_ he wants to say. _How does it feel?_

“What about,” he nudges Juyeon, “Minji noona,”

“What about her?” Juyeon nudges him back, voice just as light, full of warm air and laughter, “Want her number?”

“Shut up,”

“It’s just, I’d rather go alone, you know? Than regret who I go with. Plus it’s not really a big deal. Almost all our friends are going so it’s not like it’ll be completely horrid if one of us ends up dateless,”

“I get it,” Chanhee says.

He draws up a huge breath and his diaphragm frowns with the immense weight. The words feel clumsy on his mouth before they’ve even tumbled out, searching, missing, unable to locate where that spool begins.

“What about, you know,” Juyeon leans into him, drawn in by the drop in his volume and when they keep colliding like two ankles tied in a three-legged race, he links his arm with Chanhee’s to smooth their going, holding him to his side like a gift box, and the words run faster from Chanhee whose mouth feels like it’s been daubed with margarine and the consonants he’s trying to form keep slipping out of shape.

“Since we—“ he tries again, “what about…”

“Yah Lee Juyeon!” Comes suddenly, a roar that disturbs the peace along the entire path of promenading students. 

“You forgot this in the locker room,” an unruly looking boy in a Sons of Lions jersey—Juyeon’s teammate?—waves at Juyeon from the end of the path where it bends into a corner, a pair of neon pink briefs above his head like a flag.

“What?” Juyeon startles, blush creeping in quick, “That’s not— that’s not mine!”

“Everyone,” the boy, the hooligan, hollers, “look at the kind of underwear our star player wears!”

“That’s not—“ Juyeon darts forward, stops, glances back at Chanhee, gives his arm a squeeze, “I’ll catch you later?”

Then he’s off.

* * *

“I thought you guys went shopping like, twice?” Chanhee says around a mouthful of _gimbap._

“For _hours,”_ Sunwoo moans, shoveling noodles, “my feet are nothing but blisters. Wanna see?”

“No,” Chanhee scowls, food going sour in his mouth, “we don’t want to fucking see,”

Nursing his bowl of fried rice, Juyeon asks, “Why don’t you have anything to show for it?”

“We didn’t find anything perfect,” Changmin’s shrug is innocuous.

“Objection,” Sunwoo booms.

“Overruled,” Changmin dismisses.

“Sustained,” Sunwoo hisses back.

“You can’t sustain yourself!”

“Oh yeah? According to you and what laws?”

“The ones I study, actually,” Changmin glares for half a second before deciding his meal has gone too long without his attention.

“Hey,” Chanhee snaps his fingers, “hey, focus doggies,”

_“Doggies?”_

“I’ll lend you my invaluable skills if you get my coffee for the next month,”

“No _way,”_ Changmin scoffs as Sunwoo perks up, “How many times a day are we talking here?”

“Every morning, until finals week. Then it can go up to as many as three,”

“Finals _week_ , right? Not weeks,”

“Correct, week, singular,”

“No,” Changmin says flatly.

Sunwoo’s hand is out over the table. “Deal,”

“Sunwoo!”

“It’s okay babe,” he pats Changmin’s thigh, “I licked my palm before I shook his hand,”

“You _what?”_ Chanhee’s blood drains out of him like a puncture opened up his heels.

Juyeon seizes Chanhee’s wrist, “Why are you wiping it on me!”

“Water, water, water!” Chanhee flails under Juyeon’s hold, trying to reach for his glass and some napkins.

“Relax, I lied,”

“Kim Sunwoo,” the admission only fuels the simmer of bloodlust, “they will never find your remains,”

“Anyway,” Sunwoo, a hardened criminal, moves on like he didn’t just pinch the soul out of Chanhee’s body with one lie, “what’s the deal with you two? People have started offering thrice the price for tickets now you know,”

Chanhee could shrug, he could do nothing, he could let Juyeon take it, as he’s sure he would. But there’s a buzz inside him, the tail of a question mark swinging around, hope unspent from the last time he’d thought to bring up this question. What if? What would have happened? If they weren’t interrupted? What if—

“We’re going solo,” Chanhee says, smiling, “together,” he nudges Juyeon, stares at him from the rim of the piece of _gimbap_ he’s raising to his mouth, “Right?”

Juyeon pauses, like every muscle of his body has locked. Then, impassive, he shrugs, “News to me,”

“Well, why not?”

Juyeon talks into his bowl, “I’m not going alone,”

Chanhee’s face feels too warm and a part of him urges him to just drop it but an incredulous part of him pushes, “Well you wouldn’t be if we went alone together?”

“Makes no sense,” Juyeon maintains, failing to glance in Chanhee’s direction.

The stone-root heaves that much harder.

“It’s just a joke,” Chanhee retracts quietly. He stares into his own food and denies with all his might the urge to move down the bench, put as much distance as possible between them, “Don’t get your panties twisted,”

“I’m not,” Juyeon says, curt.

“Okay,”

“Okay,”

“Uh,” Sunwoo scratches his head, “do you two need to talk?”

“No!”

“O-kay… Oh is that Sangyeon? Sangyeon hyung! Lee Sangyeon! Come sit with us!”

* * *

6:17PM. Sigh. It’s not bad for Sunwoo, at least if he shows up within the next ten minutes, but Chanhee does not have time to be wasting this week. Plus the rips on his jeans cut a full inch above and below his knees and the chill of late October evenings is beginning to fully set in. Three more minutes, he promises. He’ll give him til’ twenty past and that’s it. Twenty minutes is gracious enough.

His phone buzzes exactly on the twenty past mark.

**Sunwoo 6:20**

come to the football field

**Chanhee 6:20**

i’ll make soup of your bones

**Sunwoo 6:20**

u will french kiss me

**Chanhee 6:20**

_[screenshot] [open contact: changmin]_

what if my hand slipped

**Sunwoo 6:21**

suddenly u wouldnt have a hand

**Chanhee 6:21**

i’d still be flawless

**Sunwoo 6:22**

as the hash slinging slasher i’m sure

**Chanhee 6:22**

🖕

**Sunwoo 6:23**

r u there yet

r u there yet

r u

ru

???

?????

“So?” he yells, spotting Sunwoo with his back to him by two goals pushed close, the bulk of his uniform casting shadow behind him like a separate entity, “What is it?”

Sunwoo turns around.

“Oh,”

Sunwoo is Sunwoo who is— Juyeon? who is holding a large board printed with bright yellow words that go over Chanhee’s head and a bouquet of sunflowers fading in his other hand.

“Well?” Juyeon yells back at him, “What do you say, Chanhee Choi?” 

“Are you— are you asking _me?”_

Laughing, Juyeon steps closer. “Is there another Chanhee here?”

“No, but— well— _me?”_

"You!"

"What about- the other day?"

"I wanted to be the one to ask you." Juyeon stops two, three feet away, cups his mouth as best he can with both his hands occupied, and shouts, “Will you be my date?”

It’s late Saturday and the team normally practices with the larks, so there’s no one around, not even those wild ones who always try to get it on at the bleachers weekend nights or whenever, but Chanhee still feels arrested by a hundred million pairs of eyes and three dozen floodlights and he's brimming and mortified and soaring. 

“That says,” he says, with more composure than he inwardly possesses, taking a step and another one and another one closer, “if I’ll be your sunshine,”

“Then,” Juyeon says, unabashed, “will you, Chanhee, be my sunshine on that dark night?”

“God,” Chanhee groans, falls to his knees like a spring dismantled, “this is so,” he leaps back up, face hidden behind his palms as he whispers, “bad,”

Juyeon has somehow crept closer without Chanhee’s notice, the board lying in the grass behind him, “You love it,”

“Presumptuous,”

“I think,” even closer now,“I have the right to be,”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I figured out your type,”

“Oh really,”

Chanhee’s knee bends into a bleacher bench but an arm comes around his waist before he can fall into it.

“Yeah,”

“So what is it?” He’s not trembling but god does the ache come back, prattling inside him like wine bottles in a crate.

“Me,” Juyeon says, without hesitance, full-bright teeth flashing with softness that makes jelly of Chanhee’s knees, “I’m your type,”

“My answer is no,”

“Are you sure?”

“No,”

Juyeon laughs, tugs him closer, a rope around Chanhee’s waist called headiness, “So it’s yes?”

“Yes,” the word is fully formed before it ever leaves Chanhee’s mouth, holding with ice firmness, spilling into the dying evening with golden light.

“Great,” Juyeon beams, “here,” he pulls back, to Chanhee’s profound dismay, and holds up the half-sorry bouquet.

“That’s it?”

“Hm?”

“You’re supposed to…” he motions for Juyeon to come closer, tries to lift his hand to the back of Juyeon’s head but under the innocent, slightly puzzled expanse of Juyeon’s expression, the courage gets devoured by self-consciousness.

“Supposed to, you know,”

“Hm,”

“Uhm, I guess, I guess it’s fine, I- the flowers are pretty? And now Sunwoo won’t—“

Chanhee almost topples backwards, fears he’ll slide right off the face of the earth as the world tilts in their collision, ripped apart by the vacuum of time and space, but the arm around him is fast, the chest he’s cradled to expansive and secure, the mouth that holds him captive gentle. The flowers fall somewhere at their feet, but it's okay. There will be another bouquet. He'll make Juyeon get him an arrangement every week, even if they're wild. He lets every last thought disperse until there's nothing but the sound of the ocean in seashells buzzing on his lips. 

When they break, he finally gets to read the two boards tied to the goal nets.

_Yes or Yes?_

He snorts into their second kiss.

How presumptuous. How perfect. 

**Author's Note:**

> 🌻 kind of tempted to write a steamy part 2 that’s the night of the ball but also i have more junew in store so that might take precedence 
> 
> 🌻 it’s disturbing my soul that i didn’t get to call out sunwoo on his bullshit tale on how he asked changmin out. it was much more romantic than that bc hello. sunwoo. but he’s condensing the story for changmin’s comfort. hyunjae was there but he promised to take it to the grave (not) :D
> 
> 🌻 anyhow thank you for reading, i hope you enjoyed~ 
> 
> (i like tbz a normal amount) [twt](https://twitter.com/miraclesnapril) | [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/miraclesnapril)


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